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Designers, Publishers and Culture Council:Include games in the collection catalog of the German National Library!

Game authors and game publishers are working together to ensure that analog games are included in the collection catalog of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library), DNB. The Spiele-Autoren-Zunft e.V. (SAZ), with more than 400 members, and the 20 publishers organized in Spieleverlage e.V. submitted the requirement to the German Federal Parliament and the Federal Government to create the necessary legal foundation.

Games in the collection catalog of the German National Library - a gain for all!

Games would get a visibly better recognition as a cultural asset than today and their relevance in society and culture would be become clearer. The high standard of German games in particular was, and still is, exemplary on an international scale. This also strengthens Germany as an innovative cultural location.

Game authors and game publishers, at last, would participate appropriately in the library royalties of the VG Wort (German collecting society for word based uses of intellectual properties).

The initiators are particularly pleased that the German Cultural Council, in which both organizations participate in the Council for Socioculture and Cultural Education, has adopted this requirement in a declaration of 24.06.2015.

In the German PDF documents below, you will find the detailed reasoning of the initiators as well as an additional proposal for a practical implementation, which could significantly facilitate the realization of the project.

Of course, this initiative can be a blueprint for other countries as well to strengthen the awareness for the cultural property of games in society. An overview of other European national libraries you can find here.

Game designers – the authors, the inventors, the developers, the composers, the creative faces behind the games